Hello fellower Alchemists,

Just a quick question thrown up you bums:

How do I 'stack' poison damage?

I read about multiplying poisons but not sure what everyone means, I normally poision my bow/sword in this order- Weakness to Poisin; " " to Magic; " " to Fire, but I don't see much of a extra effect.

ps. I play on Master if that makes a difference

You cant stack potions really, The only way you can stack them in a sense is by using multiple potions for different things, i.e Poison your bow and arrow and use a 30% damage increase on yourself you cant say...put 2x poison on your weapon and get twice the poison damage

In OB it was different wasn't it, you could 'stack' in that, am I mistaken?

How do you get good poisons in the first place? I've slit so many bandits' throats that I've decided to change things up for the DB and poison my targets. My alchemy is crap, though. I'd like a poison that paralyses and drains health until death, but I can't even find a poison that does significant drain health damage. Most of the "deadly/potent" poisons I can buy/loot do barely any damage. Ooh, 65 damage. That's what, 1/6 of their health?

You're gonna have to make your own poisons if you want ones that are stronger.

Does Skyrim even have poisons which do damage over time? I remember in Oblivion I'd walk up to someone, [censored] them sheath my dagger. Sit down at a bench or throne while they try to attack me and watch their little health circle spin about and then they slump to the floor.

You can stack effects in the same poison. For this you need to combine three different ingredients. That's how the best poisons are made.

imp stool + human flesh + slaughterfish eggs

Hurts a lot and adds paralyzing.

Poison is very underpowered in Skyrim imo, especially considering the effort.

Have you tried making poisons with a fully perked Alchemy tree?

Poison isn't enough to kill outright in skyrim's end game. The best poisons are like 200-250 damage, Vs an average mob health of 400-500 hitpoints - however, they CAN add a fatal margin to a well placed conventional attack

80 damage x3 sneak attack = 240
+ 40 damage enchantment = 280
+ 25 damage, 10 sec poison = 530
= One shot kill

Poison stacking works very well with weakness poisons. You just need a variety of different ones that share a common effect along with a differing one, and when that happens, the common effect they share gets stacked. Poisoning arrows works well, because you can apply the poison without getting close. This helps when you fight big health monsters like dragons... get them super duper vulnerable to fire, for example, by stacking 5 different fire weakness poisons on them, and then kill them with one fireball.

Yeah, I know... that's pretty cheap/lame.
-Loth

For the lingering damage ones, which one gets stacked, the duration of the poison, the points of damage or both?

Both if i am not mistaken.

Oh dear, my archer is going to be absolutely deadly now....I was always under the assumption that only one poison would work on an arrow. This will help greatly for the extra HP mob leaders and bosses now.

Whoa, whoa, whoa... you can apply more than one poison at a time? I had no idea.

Durations don't stack, IIRC... it's just the damage part. I'm pretty sure of that, anyway.

But like another poster said before me, stacking poisons pretty much requires you to custom-make them so that they have multiple effects that make them slightly different from one another... this way, you have (for example) 5 different kinds of poisons that create the same weakness and magnify it one right after the other. There is also no limit on how vulnerable you can make an enemy... the only limit is how many different kinds of poisons you can apply before the duration runs out. If you have a 100 alchemy and the right perks, you can achieve some astonishing damage after using weakness poisons -- easily one-shotting Alduin on master difficulty kind of damage.

If you use +alchemy gear that is self-enchanted to increase the alchemy skill, you can get well over a 100 alchemy when you create your poisons, and just make them sick and OP if you want. The game mechanics are there if you want to use them.
-Loth

Edit: I'm not sure you can put more than one poison on an arrow... I'm pretty sure you have to shoot multiple arrows to stack poisons on a target.

No no, don't get the wrong idea. As far as i can tell you can't apply more than one poison. Through Alchemy your poison lasts one hit longer and your poisons will become better and deadlier.

I can slow an enemy down 50% for 60 seconds.

I can paralyze an enemy for 5 seconds.

I can make an enemy 30% weaker to poisons and then hit him with a damage health poison to deal 35 poison damage.

I can even have two of these effects in the same poison.

All this and I'm not even half way in the alchemy tree. So no, poisons are not underpowered at all.

You can't put more than one poison on your weapon at a time but if you favorite 4 unique poisons, use one and hit the enemy and use a different one and hit the enemy, each effect is applied. This also works with 2 potions that have one similar effect and one different effect.

Who needs poison when you can slit their throat and wreck them?

If you come up to any enemy who can survive the initial assault then you can make poisons that deal close or over 1k damage ( depends how much you want to exploit crafting ). The only poisons that are worth using imo are damage health and paralysis.

Ah okay so I can stack the poisons on the enemy themselves but I will have to poison the arrow each time....if im understanding correctly?

Yep.

You are correct, sir. For maximum effect, use a different flavor of poison each time to stack them together.
-Loth

Yes.